


Loose Ends

by ultharkitty



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Gen, M/M, Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-12-04 05:24:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is the Golden Age, but Cybertron is light years away. </p><p>When Onslaught is given a new command on a distant planet, it brings him problems he didn't anticipate, the most prominent of which has more rotors than morals. But Onslaught soon finds that the interrogator is the least of his worries.</p><p>A pre-war tale of sex, lies, and a conspiracy large enough to swallow them all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spacehussy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehussy/gifts).



> Contains OCs aplenty. Mainly cracky gen with some consensual non-sticky interfacing, BDSM, violence, torture, death, gore (organic alien and robotic), and general dark themes. 
> 
> Many thanks to my beta, naboru, and to spacehussy for whose birthday this was written. It was meant to be a 1500 word PWP, but something else happened instead. 
> 
> The story is c.18k in total and is complete. I'll post each chapter when we're through editing it.

Onslaught's new command felt like punishment duty. 

He had never seen such an ill-disciplined slow-clocked collection of spare parts as sat before him in that briefing room. 

They were the dregs of Cybertron's armed forces. Slack jaws yawned under dull optics, and a faint whiff of rust tainted the air. Onslaught contemplated making them stand to attention, but he wasn't sure he wanted to invite that much disappointment into his life. 

He did a quick headcount: four groundframes (two tanks, a mobile battle platform, and a squat veteran so short he looked like a lost cassette), three jets (designations: Impertinent, Incompetent and In-another-dimension-entirely), and one rotary. 

Scratch that: four groundframes, three jets, and a conspicuous absence of rotary. 

"Don't bother," the veteran said, his optics narrow below his thick helm. One side of his jaw worked constantly, as though he was chewing. It squeaked.

Onslaught treated the mech to a long, cold stare. The files he'd uploaded on the shuttle journey to this scrap-forsaken outpost told him this particular advert for poor self-maintenance was called Hinge; he'd seen active duty on forty-seven separate planets, and had fluffed something on each and every one of them. 

"Is that how you address your superior officer?" Onslaught said. 

Hinge rolled his optics, and shared a look with the tank sitting next to him. "Don't bother, _Sir_ ," he said. "Copter ain't coming."

Incompetent and Impertinent (actual designations, Starstreaker and Heliopause) snickered. The second tank stuck up his hand. "Uh, Sir... commander, Sir?"

"Treads," Onslaught acknowledged. 

"I dunno if, like, anyone told you, Sir, but you're better off pretending he don't exist."

Onslaught glared. 

The tank shrugged, causing his overlapping armour plates to clatter. He glanced at his fellow grunts. "Don't anyone say I didn't warn him. It'll be like with the last one all over again."

Onslaught knew better than to ask 'which last one?' He couldn't give his supposed new unit any reason to believe he wasn't in possession of all the facts. Such as the rotary's name. 

"Where is he?" Onslaught demanded.

Starstreaker snapped his mask into place, his shoulders jiggling with soundless laughter. Hinge sat back and folded his arms. Treads studied the floor. 

"I will not repeat myself." 

The silence was broken only by the squeaking of Hinge's jaw. 

That, Onslaught thought, was enough. "Hinge, Heliopause, you're on waste duty. Starstreaker, Crash, I want a complete inventory of all supplies on my desk in two joors. Treads-"

"Level Four," Treads snapped. " _Sir._ " He cracked his knuckles, giving his colleagues a glare of his own. "He didn't hear it from me, you got that?"

* * *

Level Four turned out to be a long way from Levels One to Three. To begin with, it was underground, and the only access was via two over-sized maintenance elevators and a stairwell without the requisite number of stairs. 

This part of the complex was a military prison, or had been back when Cybertron still had an iron grip on the sector. Budget cuts and the difficult situation at the edges of the empire had seen the facility go to waste. The bullet holes and acid burns had never been repaired. 

One unit to hold an entire planet, it was a disgrace. The natives were long gone, the atmosphere toxic, and the crust stripped of every possible resource. Cybertron only kept it because the Senate was too proud to let it go. 

Onslaught stomped through the deserted corridor; it was the last place he wanted to be. 

He didn't want this dented excuse for a command. He didn't want the aching empty vistas of a dead planet, the echoing hallways of a base a hundred times too large for the soldiers sent to staff it. 

He didn't want this to be the last whimper of his dying military career. 

In the distance, metal shrieked. Onslaught crouched, ready to run. He patched himself into the building's main controls, hunting for whatever defect had caused that noise. Diagnostics ran slow, feeding him data in drips. He scanned the walls, the ceiling, expecting cracks. Level Four's status reached him just as the shriek turned into a scream. 

Onslaught transformed, accelerating hard in the direction of the sound. 

If this was some kind of inappropriate hazing ritual, Onslaught was going to make the instigators wish they had never been forged. 

He rounded a corner, and there was his missing rotary, visored and masked, and as deathly grey as the door he guarded. A key card vanished into a compartment on his arm just as the lock flashed red. 

Onslaught reverted to root mode, making every effort to loom. As his engine calmed, he could hear the muffled ghost of sobbing through the locked door. "You know who I am,” he said. “You will explain yourself."

The rotary looked him up and down. "I have something for you," he replied. "The question is, do you deserve it?" 

"I have punishment detail for _you_ ," Onslaught returned, "and there is no question whether or not you _deserve_ it. Now explain yourself."

"Or what?" the rotary said. "Don't make threats you aren't-" 

Onslaught's fist powered into the rotary's face, his grey mask buckling and his head thrown back so fast his helm hit the door before his rotor hub did. 

"You have one hundred astroseconds," Onslaught roared, "to provide me with an adequate explanation for your absence from the briefing at twenty-five fifty joors, your presence on this level, and your insubordination, or you will be facing a significant period in solitary confinement, _do you understand me?_ "

The rotary stared, optics bright. He straightened up, feeling out the damage to his face. A gash in his mask revealed a hint of a smirk. "The code," he said, "is fifty-nine delta crankshaft two double five zero, followed by the last seven glyphs of your serial number." He gestured down the hall. "There's a console in room two A. Plug it in, and you'll see."

Onslaught glanced at the locked door; whoever was on the other side was still sobbing. And the rotary was still smirking. 

Onslaught headed for the console. 

* * *

The rotary's designation was Vortex. Onslaught didn't have to suffer the indignity of asking, it was all here in the second part of his mission briefing. The part he hadn't even known existed until he accessed the files. 

Vortex lounged by the door, oozing insolence. 

Something would need to be done about that. 

Onslaught downloaded the data, then spent a while in quiet thought as it integrated. Finally, he spoke. "Only one interrogator," he said, turning to look at the rotary. 

Vortex shrugged. "You only need one." He wriggled his fingers into the gash in his mask, and wrenched. Onslaught almost winced as Vortex tore the whole thing off, wires and energon spilling from the empty sockets in the flanges of his helm. The interrogator grinned, and dropped it on a table. 

"So," he said casually, "what's your malfunction?"

"Excuse me?" Onslaught drew himself up, combat protocols engaging. 

"What's wrong with you?" Vortex said. "You got sent here, follows that there's something wrong with you. I'm just being friendly."

Onslaught let the tension bleed from his fists. "You're projecting," he said. "The problems here are all your own." According to his new data files, the list of problems was a long one, from ignoring orders to drunken brawling, and from petty theft to flying without due care and attention. And that was without the accusations of professional misconduct, the trial, the mysterious disappearance of certain key members of the prosecution. Vortex attracted circumstantial evidence like Onslaught collected commendations. 

Like he used to collect commendations. 

"Your predecessor," Vortex said, "was a very poor commander. I use predecessor in its literal sense."

"You killed him," Onslaught stated. "You should be in prison."

"No, I shouldn't," Vortex said. He wiped a drop of energon from his cut lip. "Y'see, I'm useful. They don't wanna admit it, but I am. So they put me here, and they bring me... projects. I extract the relevant intel, and send back the spare parts for recycling. It's all very tidy."

"What did you do to him?"

Vortex laughed. He nudged the nearest chair with his foot. "That's need to know."

"I am your commanding officer."

"Like frag you are," Vortex said. "I'm Intel, you're a groundpounder. The best you can hope for is you get a grip on the freaks. Which reminds me. Make sure Heliopause doesn't come down here again. If he does, it isn't likely he's going back up."

"I _am_ your commanding officer," Onslaught repeated. "Or haven't you read _your_ part of the briefing."

"I read it," Vortex said. "Shatterbolt read it too. He believed it. He didn't listen to Hinge."

"Are you threatening me?" Onslaught cut power to his weapons, and adjusted his stance to shift his centre of gravity. 

Vortex gave him a look. "No," he said. " _This_ is a threat: if you interfere with my work, if you act as though I'm answerable to you, if you make any attempt to disrupt my life, I'll take you apart and ship you back to Cybertron in a box. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly," Onslaught snarled, and charged. 

* * *

 

At some point after the first punches had been thrown and the first tables broken, with the coolant rushing in Onslaught's lines and his engine racing, the fight took a turn he didn't expect. 

This close, wrestling over the one unbroken table, with Vortex's claws uncomfortably close to his optics and his hands wrapped around the rotary's throat, it was impossible to keep their energy fields apart. Signatures meshed, tones met and resonated; the push and pull had a friction of its own, and sparks flew where they really shouldn't be flying. 

Metal screeched: Vortex's rotor hub gouging a trench in the table. Glass squeaked, those claw-tips getting ever closer. Onslaught's armour heated, as much a response to the grinding flow of their energy fields as to the natural heat of a good fight.

And this _was_ a good fight. Vortex was smaller than Onslaught, more agile. Weaker, but he had all kinds of tricks Onslaught didn't think they taught in the Intelligence Corps. He wasn't scared of picking up a few dents, and he certainly wasn't incapable of inflicting them.

Vortex writhed, his hip bashing hard into the protective cover of Onslaught's interface array, and caused a bloom of heat like Onslaught hadn't felt in vorns. The moment of surprise was enough for Vortex to get a leg free from between Onslaught's knee and the table. He kicked Onslaught hard in the thigh, but Onslaught was ready. He brought the rotary's torso up by the neck, thumbs making deep dents in his primary fuel lines, and slammed him through the table. 

It was inelegant and rough, and Onslaught would have thought it demeaning had anyone been there to observe. But it was just him and the rotary, a violent tangle raising a cloud of dust on the ancient floor. 

They ended with Vortex flat on his rotor hub. Onslaught held his arms; his knees were dented, hydraulics cut and fluid pooling beneath his legs. The rotary vented hard, still tense, but no longer struggling. 

"It's been a while," he said, voice rasping from the damage to his throat. 

Onslaught tightened his grip, trying his best to ignore the hot lick of the rotary's energy field over his chest. "What do you mean?"

Vortex smirked. "Since they sent an officer who could put me on my back."

"I'll put you in a cell," Onslaught said. "One orn for insubordination."

"What about him?" Vortex nodded towards the corridor. "I got a job to do. You don't just interrupt an interrogation."

"You should have thought about that before you decided to disregard the scheduled briefing," Onslaught said. He stood, hauling Vortex over one shoulder; the warmth of him shouldn't have been that pleasant. "This is what's going to happen." Onslaught pulled his mind out of the gutter. "We are going to medbay where Treads will repair you. You will complete this programme of interrogation under my supervision, and you will spend the following orn in a cell. Do you understand?"

To Onslaught's surprise, the rotary went limp over his shoulder, and answered with a calm, "Yes, Sir."

* * *

Taking Vortex to medbay was an education. The rapidity with which he located and pushed Treads' psychological buttons was matched only by the speed with which news of the rotary's condition spread around the base, and the others arrived to gawp. 

Onslaught gave them long enough to take a good look - in which time Vortex made one of them swear, another snap, and a third look distinctly uncomfortable - then ordered them out. 

But if Onslaught had thought watching Vortex needle his colleagues was an education, watching him work made the commander re-assess his understanding of 'education'. 

He took a seat by the door, as Vortex suggested, and watched. 

The subject was a grounder, a Class B hover-car with auxiliary wheels and a clashing blue and orange paint scheme. Vortex had him bolted to a repair platform, the kind that could be angled anywhere from horizontal to vertical, and was currently tilted ten degrees from upright. Aside from the bolts through the curvature of his aerofoil, the prisoner didn't have a scratch on him, but Onslaught hadn't imagined the screaming or the sobbing. 

"Winglet, are you listening?" Vortex stood close, hands behind his back, visor bright. "Winglet... You don't want to end up like Zipcar now, do you?"

The subject shivered, rattling in his restraints. "I told you, I... I don't know, I..." He stared at Onslaught. "Help, please. This isn't legal, it can't be. My name is Wingtilt, I'm a free citizen of Cybertron, I'll give you my serial number, my bank accounts, anything! Just get me outta here, you gotta get me outta here!"

Onslaught brought up the case notes, the text a silver overlay obscuring a portion of his peripheral vision. His security clearance wasn't high - nowhere near as high as the interrogator's - but it gave him the bare bones. He said nothing. 

" _Winglet_ ," Vortex said. "Poor little Winglet, who are you talking to?"

"Please!" The subject's hands balled into fists, his back arched. "Please, you gotta help me, he's gonna kill me! He's-"

"There's no-one there, Winglet." 

"Please!" Wingtilt persisted. "I can see you, I know you're real. Get me outta here, help me!"

Vortex tapped Wingtilt on the visor. "Losing your grip?" he said. "I understand. It happens when you lie to the authorities, Winglet. It happens when you lie to me."

"I'm not losing my grip, _you're_ lying, there's someone there, I see him!"

"I don't," Vortex said. He put his hand over the vent on Wingtilt's helm, and hummed. "You're getting warm. That can't be comfortable."

Wingtilt jerked his head away from Vortex's hand, or tried to. 

Vortex patted him. "Careful, you might overheat." Slowly, he tapped the cables on the subject's neck, selected one, pinched it tight between finger and thumb, and pulled. 

Wingtilt howled. Aside from the initial tear, it can't have been too painful, but Onslaught knew the shock of so much coolant draining from his helm, and it was not pleasant. 

"Panting already," Vortex commented. "I bet your temperature's climbing fast."

"Put it back, please, put it back!" 

"Sure," Vortex said. "Just tell me where the stockpile is."

"There is no stockpile!" Wingtilt wailed. "I already told you!"

Vortex pinched another line. "You're lying, Winglet. The League has a stockpile of energon and weapons somewhere in Iacon. You know where it is." He tugged, stretching the hose and making Wingtilt hiss. "All you have to do is tell me, and you can go home."

Even without access to Vortex's duty logs, Onslaught would have known it was a lie; Wingtilt was an idiot if he believed it. 

Vortex tore out the second line; Wingtilt screamed. This kind of treatment wasn't legal on Cybertron, but they weren't on Cybertron, and the mission briefing made it clear that was the point. 

Onslaught watched carefully, and waited to see how far it would go.

* * *

"What's your problem with Heliopause?" Onslaught asked. Vortex was on a break, perched on a table in the abandoned warden's office. Onslaught occupied a chair, the mission data still up on his HUD. 

Wingtilt had been left to stew.

"You're not going to ask me about the Groundframe Separatist League?" Vortex said. He looked disappointed, but he sounded amused. 

"They're in no position to cause me paperwork," Onslaught replied; he'd learnt enough in the past two joors not to trust the rotary's tone of voice, nor his body language. "Now answer the question."

Vortex fanned his blades; dust swirled. "It's nothing I can't deal with."

"You threatened to kill him," Onslaught said. "My mechs don't go around killing each other, you _made_ it my business."

That prompted a treacherous smile. "I threatened to kill you too," Vortex said. "You're still here."

"Don't push me."

For a moment, it looked as though that was exactly what Vortex was about to do. Then he laughed, and leaned back on his hands. "Heliopause didn't start out a tetra jet," he said. "He was reformatted."

"He was a shuttle before," Onslaught said. "He had an accident on re-entry, I know. And?"

"Shuttles got attitude problems," Vortex said. "It's part of their base coding. Arrogance. Helio couldn't let go of his. He thinks he's got a right to know what I'm doing down here."

Onslaught nodded. "I see," he said. "Give me a detailed log of specific incidents, and I will deal with it."

Vortex laughed. "Frag no!" He caught sight of Onslaught's expression. "Frag no, _Sir_. You keep him up there, out of my way, I keep down here, and we don't get vital fluids all over the floor. _And_ ," he said, cutting off Onslaught's complaint, "you keep your one active soldier who can reach escape velocity."

Onslaught knew his frame had betrayed his surprise before Vortex's smirk returned. 

"Didn't know that, huh? He doesn't spread it around, but he's good for short range space flight."

That wasn't in the jet's technical specifications. Onslaught leaned forward."How do you know?" 

Vortex shrugged. "You pick things up."

"What else," Onslaught said, "do you pick up?"

"I'm not your informant," Vortex said, his rotor blades slowing to a stop. "Not at this price."

Onslaught stood. "I wasn't offering recompense."

Vortex watched him. "Exactly."

Onslaught waited. Would there be a shot, a charge, another cog-headed comment designed to make _him_ spark the fight? But Vortex just sat there, staring. Eventually, Onslaught said, "What do you want?"

Vortex rolled his shoulders, the tension easing. "I want out."

"Out?" 

"Out of this." Vortex made a gesture that encompassed the facility, the planet. "Out of the military. I want citizenship, and I need an officer to sponsor my application."

Onslaught shook his head. " _Why?_ "

"What do you mean, why?" Vortex turned his blades again, moving the air. "I wanna go back to Cybertron. I wanna _live_. This place is a scrapyard."

"You're useful here," Onslaught reminded him. "You said it yourself."

Vortex pushed down from the table. "I'm not going to spend the rest of my function at the bottom of a chain of command that does frag all for me." 

The honesty - and Onslaught was sure it _was_ honesty - caught him off guard. Vortex glared, as though daring him to make something of it. Onslaught nodded to the door. "We'll talk about this later. Break's over."

* * *

"Hinge has a salvage business," Vortex said. He sat with his feet on the back of a second chair in the officers' refuelling station. Only now it was one single officer's refuelling station, and Onslaught didn't much feel like excluding the interrogator. 

The intel gained from Wingtilt was confirmed by the next of the prisoners. There were five in total, three waiting in the cells, one already processed. Onslaught observed Wingtilt's deactivation, making sure it was neither painful nor prolonged. No matter their distance from Cybertron, and no matter the way things were usually done here, there _were_ still protocols. Vortex didn't like it, but he shelved his frustration, and Onslaught allowed him to conduct his next interrogation alone. 

Onslaught hadn't been surprised when Vortex ventured out of Sector Four to report to him directly after. 

"What kind of salvage?" Onslaught asked. 

Vortex took his ration slowly, swilling it around the cube. "He goes planet-side on his off cycles and hunts for scrap," he said. "He trades it with the Tulon, nearest thing to a sentient race left in this sector. Helio provides the transport."

"Is anyone else involved?"

"As though Hinge could stop them. What else is there to do on a dead world? Shoot up the ruins, race around the ruins, write a fraggin' novel about the ruins. I dunno."

"You could all work to improve your service records," Onslaught said. "You might be redeployed somewhere better."

"Like a spotless service record helped you?" Vortex threw his head back and emptied the cube down his throat. "Don't give me that look, I know your type. I know how Iacon treats you."

"Remember your place," Onslaught said, but Vortex tilted his chair on two legs, and carried on regardless. 

"You don't wanna be here," Vortex said. "You wanna be where the action is. But somewhere along the line, you made an enemy. And your enemy made friends. Lots of friends." He gave a sage nod, as though Onslaught's silence could be taken as agreement. "You reached the end of the road," he said. "The highway don't go no further for you."

Onslaught kicked the chair out from under Vortex's feet. "Your lack of respect is beginning to grate," he said. 

"Really?" Vortex cocked his head to one side. His mask was back in place, but Onslaught could tell he was smirking. "What you gonna do about it?"

"Refuse to negotiate regarding your application for citizenship," Onslaught said. 

"What the frag?" 

"You're not helping yourself."

Vortex slammed the cube on the table, and made for the door. "You got problems."

Onslaught couldn't disagree with that.


	2. Chapter 2

Onslaught caught the beginning of the fight on the security network, and got to the barracks half a breem too late. 

Heliopause had Treads' arms in a lock behind him, a knee in the small of the grounder's back. They were both covered in dents.

"I oughta finish you," was all Onslaught heard before Heliopause caught wind of him and dropped Treads like a sack of molten slag. 

"What's this?" Onslaught demanded. He locked his cannons on Heliopause, but kept Treads very much in his line of sight. "Report."

Treads straightened up, shooting the jet a look of pure loathing. 

"Nothing..." He massaged his throat, realigning the cables. "...to report, Sir." 

"No, Sir," Heliopause said. "Everything's fine here."

Like hell it was. "Heliopause, you're on patrol, routes one through five, now and every twelve joors until I say otherwise. Dismissed."

The jet scowled, but he had the sense to salute before storming out. Treads stood to attention, waiting. 

"Well?" Onslaught said. 

Treads shook his head. "No idea, Sir."

Onslaught closed the door. "Credit me with more intelligence than that," he said. "Why did Heliopause attack you in full view of a security camera?"

Treads looked up. " _Frag_... Uh, Sir, I don't know. I think he might be glitched."

"Is that your professional medical opinion?"

To his credit, Treads straightened up again. "Yes, Sir," he said. "He's never done that before, not to me."

"But to others?"

Treads took the long deep vent of a soldier who'd let something slip in front of his superior officer, and whose superior officer was not about to pretend he hadn't caught it. "Um, maybe?" he said. "And you didn't hear it from me. Sir."

"Go on," Onslaught said. 

"It's, uh, a little... delicate," Treads said. 

"Out with it."

Treads took another long vent. "When he first came here, he got involved with Vortex." He paused. " _Involved_ involved. You get what-"

"I understand," Onslaught said. 

Treads swallowed. "It went on for maybe a deca-orn, then they had this fight. Don't know what about. Heliopause pulled his rotors out, all of them, even the tail blades. He crushed the mounts and damaged his engines. Grounded him. Vortex put out his optics, he... take a look at the medical log, you'll see what happened. Took them both out of action for a quartex, I had to wait for the next supply shuttle to come with the right parts." 

"How long ago was this?" Onslaught asked. He began to regret dispatching Heliopause on patrol. He sent a text command to Starstreaker to join him. 

"Maybe forty orns," Treads replied. "I can check the logs."

"All right," Onslaught said. "I'll bring Heliopause to Med-bay One at the end of his patrol. If he has a glitch, I want you to find it and fix it." 

Treads nodded. "Yes, Sir. And if he doesn't?"

"I'll deal with that when I come to it."

* * * 

Onslaught put a hand on the door frame, barring Vortex's exit from the interrogation room. The platform was empty, his current subject only just returned to the cells. 

"Why wasn't your liaison with Heliopause on record?"

Vortex folded his arms. "Do you submit a report each time you get laid?" 

"Regulations are regulations."

"That's a 'no' then," Vortex said. He flipped the repair platform to horizontal, and leant his hip against it. "I'm detecting a hint of hypocrisy."

"Answer the question," Onslaught said. "Why did you hide your liaison with Heliopause?"

"It was just a frag," Vortex said. "A few frags. All right, it went on a while, but it wasn't _serious_. It was just 'facing. It's not like it's relevant." 

This truly was punishment duty, Onslaught thought. Trapped on a planet with a close-knit bunch of morons and their sordid sex lives. "Why did you fight?"

"He poked his nosecone where it doesn't belong, I already told you." Vortex sighed, unfolding his arms, and resting his hands on the platform behind him. "He doesn't have clearance to come down to Level Four. You know that, the only ones with clearance are you, me and Treads, and Treads is only allowed because he's a medic. Helio didn't like I wouldn't let him. I didn't like he wouldn't take no for an answer."

There were a host of different things Onslaught would rather have been doing at that moment: cleaning his guns, scrubbing the shower floor with his glossa, getting smelted. Instead, he continued the questioning. "So you tore out his optics." 

"And?" Vortex shrugged. "Sorry. _And, Sir?_ "

"Sarcasm will earn you an extra two days in solitary," Onslaught said. 

"You don't wanna put me in solitary," Vortex said. 

Onslaught bristled, his fists balled. "Don't tell me what I want to do." 

Vortex stepped forward. "Putting me in solitary's no fun," he said. "I know what you _really_ want."

"You will regret goading me," Onslaught snarled. "You're withholding information, I could haul you up on charges."

"Oh no," Vortex said quietly, his rotor blades rattling in their mounts. "That's not what you want at all." 

"I want," Onslaught growled, "your cooperation."

Vortex stepped close enough Onslaught could feel the faint push of his energy field. The rotary stared up into Onslaught's visor. "But you won't give me yours," he hissed. "Guess what, you want it? You earn it."

Onslaught made a feint for the rotary's arm, and Vortex sprang back. But Onslaught's reach was long, and he caught a handful of tail rotor. He hauled, and Vortex spun in his grip, fist heading straight for Onslaught's visor. 

Ducking, Onslaught barrelled into him, catching him hard in the chest with his shoulder. They hit the repair platform with a crash and the whole thing juddered. Onslaught got a hold of Vortex's waist. He squeezed, holding Vortex tight to his shoulder as he stood, and tried to ignore the warnings from the base of his left canon barrel that spoke of fingers where they really didn't belong. 

He also - staunchly and with every fibre of his being - ignored the hot thrill of pleasure that rang through the rotary's energy field. And he hoped like hell that not a trace of his own enjoyment could be felt. 

Pleased he might be, but Vortex was far from tractable. He kicked and squirmed and scratched as Onslaught carted him out into the corridor, and carried him swiftly to the office they had already trashed. 

With a heave, Onslaught tore the rotary from his shoulder and threw him across the room. 

If a single item of furniture had survived their last fight, this was its unlucky day. Vortex landed hard in a tangle of metal. Then he was up again, rebounding fist first from the heap of broken tables. 

"You want to go through this again?" Onslaught snapped. He landed a hit which made the rotary reel, while managing to keep out of reach of those hands. "Or don't you remember the joors you spent in medbay?"

Vortex laughed. "Again?" he cried. "You think once is all it takes to win my respect?"

Was it even worth winning? But no, Onslaught had seen the mech at work, he knew his capabilities. For this assignment, for this prison of a mission on a dead planet in the middle of nowhere, Vortex's respect _was_ worth winning. 

Vortex pounced, and Onslaught charged. Timing it to the micro-klik, he fired up his thrusters. They clashed in mid-air, hard enough to raise sparks. Fists flew, metal clanged and dented. It was wonderful. Not just the heady buzz of combat and the struggle for supremacy, but the molten surge of lust, the urge to violence and the knowledge that he didn't need to hold back. 

Onslaught got the impression the feeling was mutual. 

Venting hard, Vortex twisted, and got his elbow wedged in Onslaught's throat. His EM field flared with triumph, but his manoeuvre gave Onslaught a clear path. With his cables restricted, and stars spreading in his vision, Onslaught struck, and seized the copter by the rotor hub. 

For a brief and marvellous moment, Vortex went limp. Then he started up again, flailing and twisting and tearing at Onslaught's arm. 

Onslaught ignored him.

It took a lot of wrenching and writhing, but finally Onslaught was able to stand, and to bring Vortex up with him. Gradually, the struggles wound down to nothing. The interrogator glared, dangling from his hub, subdued but far from submissive. 

"I want the full story," Onslaught said. "You and Heliopause. Now."

Something glimmered in Vortex's optics, and Onslaught had a mind to rip off his mask and make him keep it off. 

"O _kay_ ," Vortex said. "But I want something from you."

Onslaught was tempted to shake Vortex, to throw him across the room again. He'd _won_. Twice now. The rotary should be cowed. He took a moment to calm himself. "What?" 

Vortex's fans still whirred, his vents churning out hot air. "Sparring," he said. "Forget about solitary, let's fight. Just you and me. Every other off-cycle." 

Onslaught pretended to give it some thought. In truth, it was hard not just to blurt his answer before Vortex had finished making his demand. 

"You can mark it down as training," Vortex says. "Repairs for training come out of the central budget, right?"

Slowly, and wondering if he was doing the right thing, Onslaught put Vortex back on his feet.

"Sparring," he said. "Granted. And I will suspend your sentence. Now, your end of the bargain."

Vortex flexed his blades and rolled his shoulders. "Hardline interface or data crystal, how'd you want it?"

* * * 

Onslaught wasn't sure he wanted it at all. 

It didn't help that the thought of a hardline connection made every part of him ache from his ports to his laser core. It didn't matter that he told himself it was just a memory transfer, just a simple observation of Vortex's internal data logs. 

It didn't matter, because it wouldn't be. How could it? After a fight like that, if they stayed in proximity, with their mingled energy fields and a thrill of residual charge zipping along the connection, Onslaught could see where that would end, and although it was his legal right to augment his working relationships through erotic interfacing, now was really not the time. 

He told himself it was because of Vortex: he was manipulative, conniving, he couldn't be trusted. Onslaught knew he was deceiving himself. 

And so, he'd taken the second option. 

He passed the data crystal between his fingers, as close as he'd got so far to plugging it into his console. 

Did he really want to know?

He thought of Heliopause in the medbay, giving Treads the evil eye while the tank did his job with commendable professional detachment. Heliopause glancing his way whenever he thought Onslaught wasn't looking. 

He flipped open the panel beside the console's sloping keyboard, and pressed the crystal into the slot.

"Hinge to command. Command, pick up!" The voice echoed through the room, and Onslaught hit reply. 

"What is it?"

"I got a situation," Hinge said. His jaw squeaked over the comm, a morose echo. "One casualty, doped outta his stupid head."

"Contact Treads," Onslaught said, getting the urge to slam his fist through the monitor. "Treads is your _first point of contact for medical emergencies_."

"Can't get him," Hinge said. "Can't find him. Fraggit, Crash, don't do that, he'll puke in his mouth!"

Onslaught sighed, and flicked the crystal back out of its socket. "What's your location?"

* * * 

If he wasn't dead or dying, Treads was in serious trouble. 

Onslaught transformed to vehicle mode, laying everything out in his mind as he sped to Hinge's position. 

Heliopause was on patrol with Starstreaker. Treads had been seen alive and well since he left, meaning Treads probably wasn't dead or dying. He'd probably gone planet-side and got caught in an electrical storm, or he was somewhere on base where the radiation messed with their comms. 

Or he just plain wasn't answering.

Priorities: get to Hinge, assess the situation, send Crash out to look for Treads. He could always mobilise Aggravator to help with the search, although he had serious concerns about their largest groundframe's intellectual capacity. If he hadn't seen the mech's specifications, Onslaught would have questioned whether he was even self-aware. 

He got to Hinge just in time to see Talon, the third of the base's jets, purge violently over Crash's foot. 

"Frag you!" Crash wailed, leaping back. Hinge huffed and gave Talon a hearty slap on the back. It didn't help. 

"What's wrong with him?" Onslaught said. He got down on one knee, out of range of Talon's mouth, and tried to get a good look at the jet's face. 

"Overdose," Hinge said. "Home-made circuit speeders, probably some energon additives, frag knows." He tapped the side of the jet's head. "Talon, can you hear me?"

Talon groaned, his optics dim, and a nasty wheezing coming from his vents. 

"It's eatin' my finish," Crash complained, still spraying little droplets of rust-tainted energon as he shook off his feet. "Frag."

"What finish?" Hinge snapped. 

"Crash," Onslaught boomed, and the tank's head swivelled around so fast Onslaught heard his neck cables twang. "Fetch Aggravator, find Treads." He considered adding Vortex to the search party, but that could be more trouble than it was worth. "Go!"

Crash lumbered out of the room.

"Has he done this before?" Onslaught asked. 

Hinge nodded. "Not this bad, but yeah, he's a regular. Get it out, buddy, c'mon."

Talon wretched again, a thin trickle of spoiled energon draining from his mouth. 

Disgusting. 

"How much danger is he in?"

Hinge shrugged and studied the ceiling, his jaw squeaking louder than usual. "Could die," he said. "Had a little sludge melt outta his left dorsal vent a while back. Think he sped his circuits a bit too much, y'know?"

Onslaught bit back his revulsion, and went over to the pair. "We're taking him to med-bay," he said. "I'll carry him, you get the doors."

* * * 

Hog-tied with his own interface cable. 

That was how Crash described the position in which he and Aggravator had finally found Treads. Hog-tied with his own interface cable, suspended from the ceiling, with his chest wide open and Vortex playing with his components. 

Onslaught was not impressed. 

Still, he had a situation to deal with, and there were priorities. The medic's sex life was not one of them. According to a suddenly talkative Aggravator, they'd burst in on Treads being very loud. Very loud indeed. And not in a 'screaming for help, trying desperately to escape' kind of way. No, this was a 'screaming for more, trying desperately not to overload' situation. Which got Vortex very neatly off one hook, although the charge of keeping a medic from essential duties lay square on his shoulders. 

_Priorities,_ Onslaught reminded himself. Repairs first, punishment later. 

At least Onslaught had a tab on the locations of his team. Crash was in the wash-racks, Aggravator had rumbled off to go for a drive in the ruins surrounding the base, Hinge was sitting in the corner of medbay squeaking his jaw, and Treads was tending to Talon, and trying his best not to catch Onslaught's eye. 

It probably didn't help that Vortex was leaning against the wall by the window, watching.

"OK," Treads said. "He's stable. He needs a few replacement parts, I think I've got them in stock. Uh..." He glanced at Vortex, who was thankfully silent, then at the wall just to the side of Onslaught's head. 

"Do it," Onslaught said. "Hinge, stay and assist. Vortex, with me."

Onslaught waited until he'd walked them out of earshot of medbay before shoving Vortex against the nearest wall. 

"What is wrong with you?" he snapped. "What goes on in that pathetic excuse for a processor that you think it's acceptable to immobilise our only medic and disable his comms?"

Vortex's rotor tips vibrated, his visor blazed. "Jealous?" he said.

Onslaught got a grip on Vortex's neck. "You don't let up, do you?" 

"Why bother?" Vortex said. "You're not going to support my application."

"I never said..." Onslaught cut his vocaliser, and sighed through his vents. "You're on your final warning. One more incident like today and I'll not only refuse to consider your application for citizenship, I will strip you of _all_ non-essential privileges and restrict your movements to Level Four. Do you understand?"

Vortex tensed. "But you... heavily implied...”

A door opened at the far end of the corridor. Onslaught released his grip.

"I implied scrap," he said. He stepped back, fingers tingling. "Now get to work. I don't want to see you again until seventeen hundred joors tomorrow."

Vortex gave him an odd look. "Sir," he said, and stomped off down the hall, shoving roughly past the two jets who had just come in.

The taller of the jets started after him. 

"Heliopause," Onslaught said sharply. "Go to D Block and fetch any medical supplies you can find." He paused; the jet was still staring. " _Heliopause_ , I gave you an order."

Starstreaker slapped his companion's wing, and Heliopause turned that stare on Onslaught. 

"Medical supplies," Onslaught said. "Block D. _Now_." 

"What happened, Sir?" Starstreaker asked, as Heliopause left. Onslaught waited to make sure he hadn't taken the same direction as Vortex, and beckoned Starstreaker over. 

"What do you know about Talon's addictions?" Onslaught asked. 

Starstreaker fell into step. "I... I keep a watch over him, Sir. I was trying to get him to quit. Is he going to be all right?"

Convenient, Onslaught thought, until his elbow passed by Starstreaker's wing and their energy fields meshed. Starstreaker was terrified. 

"Treads is doing all he can," Onslaught said. "He's in Med-bay One. Go there, give him all the information he needs."

Starstreaker nodded. "Yes, Sir."

* * *

It was evening before Onslaught remembered the data crystal.

Outside his window, past the high boundary wall of the complex, a dust trail billowed: Aggravator on his way back to base. The ruins glowed red as rust, the distant yellow sun a smudge behind a haze of toxic clouds. At least it hadn't rained, although protocol called for all returning personnel to take a decontamination shower in the guard house before entering the base proper, no matter the weather. 

Onslaught pressed the crystal back into the designated slot. He'd need a memory purge when this assignment was done. 

He waited for the software to load, glancing at the security monitors banked above the main screen. Heliopause was in the rec room, hunched over his ration. Hinge and Treads were in medbay, watching Talon; Crash was on the shooting range, although he spent more time itching his foot than shooting. Vortex and Starstreaker were in recharge, the former sprawled on a table in the prison wardens' mess hall, the latter propped against the wall outside medbay. 

It occurred to Onslaught that the prisoners might also require watching, and perhaps fuelling, but that was Vortex's responsibility. After a moment's thought, he added an inspection of the cells to the next day's itinerary. 

While the crystal and the console synched, he spared a second thought for the sunset, and the odd passage of time on a planet still within the gravitational pull of its star. He remembered Cybertron's sun, the brightest star in a cloudless sky. He'd been young then, and hopeful. He'd seen a general's rank in his future, and had aimed for it like the direct beam of a laser. 

He didn't know where it had all gone wrong. 

The console beeped, and an image appeared on screen. This must have been what it was like to see through Vortex's optics. There was no overlay of text, the interrogator must have removed that layer, but the visuals were sharp, the chromatic spectrum skewed for infra-red. Onslaught turned up the audio and rebalanced the colours.

It began with a close-up of Heliopause, whispered endearments from the tetra-jet's lips, sounds of enjoyment. Onslaught caught glimpses depending on the direction of Vortex's gaze: grey legs wrapped around bronze hips, a tangle of cables, a profusion of tiny sparks. 

Then a dark finger over the jet's expressive mouth, a request for silence. 

Was that when things changed? Heliopause was sullen a moment, then seemed to bounce back, lifting Vortex bodily and pinning him against the wall. 

Judging by the aural evidence, this was more than acceptable. Until Heliopause opened his mouth again. 

"I want you, just you... I love you."

Vortex made another attempt to silence him. But Heliopause grabbed his wrists and pinned them above the rotary's head. This, Vortex seemed to enjoy, but the words?

"I don't like seeing you with Relay."

"Tough," Vortex said. " _Vector Sigma_... How many times do you have to be told? Just frag me."

" _No._ " Heliopause pressed closer, filling the screen. "This isn't _just_ fragging." He did something at the base of Vortex's helm, and the visual feed filled with static. 

"We have a bond," Heliopause whispered. "I know what you need, and it isn't a hulking great grounder with more wheels than memory chips."

Vortex moaned and metal screeched. "Just shut up and 'face me."

"You need me," Heliopause persisted. "You love me, you just don't know how to say it. Drop Relay, stop trying to escape."

And that, Onslaught thought, was the point on the narrow mountain road of their relationship where Vortex discovered that not only was he with the wrong vehicle, but that someone had deactivated the brakes.

It went downhill quickly, going from harsh demands and plaintive pleas to shouted accusations and stubborn refusals. To Vortex, it was just a frag. To Heliopause, it was something deeper and stronger that Onslaught found frankly bizarre. The jet was confused, he'd constructed a fantasy based on a delusion. Onslaught couldn't imagine how he had misinterpreted the signs. 

Until Heliopause took it upon himself to bind the rotary to his bunk, and remove his rotor blades with less than surgical exactitude. 

Vortex squirmed, his face pressed into the firm plastic, and his protests turned instantly to moans. He reached overload in less than five astroseconds, and Heliopause told him how much he enjoyed that, how it showed him Vortex's true feelings. 

This did not go down well. 

Onslaught's fingers hovered over the cancel key. He didn't need to see this. He shook his head, and adjusted the controls, bringing the audio up as text. He ran the visual at double speed, then triple. This was better, this didn't prompt a trickle of heat where it wasn't welcome. This was safe. 

Treads had told the truth. By the time Vortex tore his way free of the bonds, nothing was left of his alt mode equipment. Onslaught suspected that even less would have been left of Heliopause had Aggravator not broken down the door, and Onslaught's predecessor - or one in a long line of Onslaught's predecessors - hit them both with a null ray. 

Vortex collapsed on the berth, the jet's optics a cascade of amber glass falling from his hand. 

Onslaught powered down the console. He sat back, watching the screens, and counting the astroseconds until Crash was due in the central control room to take over monitor duty for the night. 

There had to be a way to turn this place around, to head off the joint disasters that were Heliopause and Vortex. To use this assignment to redeem his record. 

On the leftmost screen, Crash lumbered into the control room. He dropped in the chair, paused to itch the top of one foot with the bottom of the other, and logged in. 

Taking one last look at the screens, Onslaught decided to call it a night.


	3. Chapter 3

The comm came halfway through his recharge cycle. Onslaught shook himself awake, on his feet before his minor systems had properly booted. 

He hit reply. It was Hinge again, the harbinger of bad news. "Commander, we've got a problem." 

"Report." 

"It's Crash, he... He picked it up from Talon. Treads thinks his additives were contaminated." 

"And?" Onslaught snapped. "What did he _pick up?_ "

A lonely squeak sounded over the comm, then, "Cosmic rust."

"Get me Treads. Now."

"I can't," Hinge said. "He's back in med-bay. Talon's on the edge. I went after Crash. It's his foot, Treads says he's gotta amputate. He took off. I... got him shut in a munitions locker. He ain't happy, Sir. I need backup."

Onslaught counted a long intake and an even longer ex-vent, until his cables began to relax and his fists uncurled. "It's only a foot." He spoke slowly so as not to shatter his fragile inner peace. "We can get him a new one."

A muffled bang carried over the comm. 

"Yeah," Hinge said. "Y'see, Crash don't like surgery..."

Onslaught went over to his console and punched in Crash's number. "Crash," he snapped, while the comm on his arm registered only dull squeaks, the sound of Hinge's patient attention. "Crash, do you copy?"

There was a short burst of static, followed by a hesitant, "Sir?"

"Crash, report to Med-bay One. That's an order."

"No can do, Sir," Crash said. "I ain't going back there." Another bang resounded over both comms, followed by the unmistakable sound of Crash frantically itching his foot. " _Frag._ "

Onslaught didn't bother trying again. In all his vorns of service, he'd come to realise that there was a time for talking, and there was a time for knocking his subordinates unconscious and hauling them to med-bay whether they liked it or not. 

With the addition of thick rubber gloves and an anti-contamination poncho, this was one such time. 

His vents steamed on the inside of the clear plastic. Hinge rattled along behind him, likewise draped in plastic, the tail end dragging along the floor. 

Onslaught lay Crash on the first available surface, and took stock of the changes. 

The floor gleamed. And the berths, the walls, the ceiling. Every shelf had been scoured, every surface scrubbed until it shone. The room stank of anionic surfactants, an aggressive miasma that made him feel as though it was him that had been chemically purified. 

Treads stepped from behind a curtain at the far end of the room. He was gloved to the shoulders, and he'd fixed an extra filtration unit to each of his vents. He still didn't look Onslaught in the eye.

"I need you to sign the forms," he said. He gestured to a console, and gave Crash a quick visual inspection.

Onslaught nodded. It wasn't the first time he'd over-ridden a subordinate's consent for the public good. When he typed his signature, the traces of cleanser on the keypad made his fingertips sting. "Done."

"OK," Treads said. "Thankyou, Sir." He pulled over a trolley, and cracked open the vacuum-sealed packaging of a sedative chip. He paused. "Right..."

"What's the delay?" Onslaught demanded. 

Treads shook his head. "Nothing," he said. "No delay."

"He's worried Crash is gonna flip out when he wakes up without a foot," Hinge said. "It happened before, poor guy got left behind on Quercius Seven after that big battle with the Alluons."

Onslaught nodded, he remembered from Crash's record.

"Did they tell you he got both legs blown off?" Hinge said, while Treads slotted the chip into Crash's arm. 

Onslaught nodded again. "It happens."

"Yeah." Hinge grabbed a stool and vaulted up onto the seat. "Did they tell you who found him?"

Treads glanced over, tutted, then went back to his pre-op checks. It was strange, Onslaught thought; suddenly Hinge was captain cooperative, and Treads was the quiet one. 

"Enlighten me," he said. 

Hinge leaned forward, optics wide and - for once - bright. "The _Quintessons_."

"Crankshafts," Treads sneered. He fired up his laser cutter, throwing Hinge a nasty look. 

"It was!" Hinge protested. "He told me. They did all kinds of things to him. Nasty things. _Experiments_. He never got his legs back until after he escaped."

"Uh-huh." Onslaught stood, watching Treads cut through the outer layer of Crash's armour, just above the knee.

"He's got a phobia," Treads said. "That's all. _Quintessons_." He huffed, the sound echoing in his secondary filters. 

Hinge opened his mouth, but Onslaught spoke first. "I believe any outbreak of cosmic rust necessitates an immediate state of quarantine?"

Treads nodded. He set down the laser cutter, lifted away the section of armour, and began to dismantle Crash's knee. "Just this med-bay," he said. "For now. Which is good, 'cause we need supplies. Replacement parts, anti-rust treatment, cleanser."

"I thought there was no treatment for cosmic rust?" 

"Depends how bad it gets," Treads said. He pulled out a screw and dropped it in a tray. "Mild cases sometimes respond to certain acids. It's best just to replace the parts, but you don't always have that option." Another screw rolled to a stop on the base of the tray. "Crash is lucky, he'll be fine." 

"What about Talon?" Onslaught asked. 

Treads winced, and Hinge studied the floor.

"That bad," Onslaught said. 

"I took out the affected parts, and I put him in stasis," Treads replied. He picked up the laser again, moving in to sever and cauterise a collection of small hoses. Onslaught watched, fascinated. Treads sighed. "Wish I could do more." The lines parted, gleaming a moment with various fluids before the heat sealed them again. "But I don't have the skills. And even if I did, I don't have the equipment." 

"Best case scenario?" Onslaught asked.

Treads shrugged, his armour plates clattering. "I get him cleaned up and shipped off to somewhere they _can_ help him," he said. 

Onslaught didn't need to ask for the worst case scenario. He rolled his shoulders; it was beginning to get warm under the plastic, and the thought of cosmic rust was making him itch. Hinge fidgeted; the same thought seemed to have occurred to him. 

"What's the chance I've caught it?" he said. 

"Same as me and Hinge," Treads replied. "We all touched him." He dropped another handful of parts in the tray. "I don't wanna be optimistic or nothing, but Talon's contaminated on the inside, it hasn't spread to his armour yet. We didn't... come into contact like Crash did. We might be OK."

"What if-" Hinge began, but the rest of his question was swallowed by the scream of the emergency siren.

* * *

"This is Intel to Command. I repeat, this is _Intel_ , that incredibly useful branch of the military, to _Command_. Pick up your fraggin' comm and turn off that pit-spawned siren!" 

Onslaught did not pick up his comm, neither did he turn off the siren. Vortex could yell all he liked, it was still a half breem's drive between the newly quarantined Med-bay One and the compound's main control room. Although he could access the damage reports remotely, he couldn't actually change anything.

"You're ignoring me," Vortex snarled. "I know you can hear me, I heard the click when you picked up. I can hear your engine."

The siren wailed on, rising and falling in volume as Onslaught passed the various speakers. 

"I was _busy_ ," Vortex said. "I don't like being interrupted."

Another call came in: Starstreaker. 

Onslaught put Vortex on hold and answered. "Any news?"

"I've located the source of the problem," Starstreaker said. "I can see three, no four... five native life forms. Organic, flight capable. They've breached automatic air defences at tower fourteen, and they're heading for the barracks. It looks like they chewed up the gun turret, it's a mess." 

"Can you take them out?" Onslaught said. 

"No problem, Sir," Starstreaker replied. "Uh, Sir, any news on Talon?"

"He's stable," Onslaught said. "Neutralise the problem, then report back. Onslaught out."

By the time he arrived at the command centre, Vortex had hung up. 

"Am I relieved?" Heliopause said. He went to stand, but Onslaught shook his head. 

"Grab a decontamination kit," he said as the siren continued to wail and the lights turned his armour purple and red. "This whole area needs treating."

He logged into the console, and worked his way through the damage reports. _Organic presence detected_ , check; _Perimeter camera fourteen inoperative_ , check; _Defence turret fourteen inoperative_ , check; _Multiple organic incursions at sector four, building twelve, second storey_ , check, although hopefully not for much longer. 

Heliopause made a point of clattering loudly to the maintenance closet, then back again. He tore open the emergency decontamination kit, a scowl on his bronze face. 

Onslaught cancelled the last warning, and the siren abruptly stopped. 

"He's no good," Heliopause said. "I think it's only right I warn you."

"Excuse me?" 

The flier flicked his wings, and upended a bottle of cleanser into the tub. "Vortex," he said. "He'll destroy you. Hinge told you not to go looking for him."

"He's under my command," Onslaught said. "And so, might I remind you, are you."

"Of course, Sir," Heliopause said. "But I won't stand by and watch him dismantle you like he did the others."

The screen flashed: _Organic presence detected_. Onslaught cancelled the warning, and drew himself up to his full height. "You're driving very close to the edge," he said. 

Heliopause smiled. "Grounder metaphors don't exactly hit home. I know we haven't got off to the best of starts, Commander, but you need to trust me. Keep away from him. Put in a transfer request, move on to something better. I know you've agreed to... meet with him for, what was it? Sparring? That really isn't a good idea."

Onslaught gave that gleaming face closer scrutiny. "I haven't entered that into the training log yet," he said. "How did you find out?"

The jet took a small step back. "Hinge told me," he said. 

"I see," Onslaught said. "And if I were to ask Hinge?"

"Please do," Heliopause said. "He'll confirm it."

Of course he would, Onslaught thought, Hinge knew what was good for him. And Heliopause could fabricate a chain of gossip all the way back to Vortex. 

"I'm serious," Heliopause said. "Stay away from him."

Yet another _Organic presence detected_ warning flashed up on the screen. Onslaught dismissed it. "After you've cleaned the command room, you will identify the exact route taken by Crash between the incident in medbay where Talon infected him with cosmic rust and his arrival here, and you will apply standard decontamination procedures to the same."

Heliopause's optics narrowed, and he went to speak. 

" _After_ that," Onslaught continued, "you will return to monitor duty until Starstreaker relieves you. Then you will effect the repairs to turret and camera fourteen. What will you do?"

"Understood, Sir," Heliopause said. 

Onslaught revved his engine. "You have not answered my question. _What_ will you do?"

"Decontaminate Crash's route, monitor duty, repairs to turret fourteen," Heliopause said. Onslaught didn't need to make contact with his energy field to feel the loathing, it came off him in waves.

Onslaught logged out. "Get to it."

* * *

Starstreaker returned carrying a dead alien in a xeno-hazard bag. "I got us a sample!" he announced, stepping into Onslaught's office. "It's a bit fried, but it'll scan OK." 

Onslaught did not take the bag. "Freeze it," he said. "It can go back with the next supply ship. Is the compound secure?"

"Sure is, Sir." Starstreaker gave the bag a fond smile. "They're all dead. I could go out in the city and hunt for the rest of them if you like? I'm sure there are more."

He looked so hopeful. It was, Onslaught realised, the look of a mech whose core function had long been denied, and who had been given the briefest glimpse of his full potential. 

"Not today," Onslaught said. "I need you to report to Med-bay Two for a scan. Then you can relieve Heliopause in the control room."

Starstreaker gave a smart salute, and left.

Onslaught would have preferred apathy. Apathy he could deal with, it was the sign of a unit unlikely to cause more than routine trouble. But fervid enthusiasm? With a mix of curiosity and concern, he tracked Starstreaker on the security network. 

It wasn't hard. The jet went exactly where, and did exactly what, Onslaught had told him. 

Following him gave Onslaught an update on the others. In Med-bay One, Treads had removed and isolated Crash's infected foot, and had wheeled the tank into an isolation ward. He was still unconscious; Onslaught hoped he would remain that way. 

Hinge slouched on the same stool as earlier, draped in plastic, his head slumped and his optics dim. Treads worked around him, swathed in plastic, taking Starstreaker's scans remotely. He looked tired.

Starstreaker hung around long enough for Treads to comm him with the all clear for cosmic rust, and left in the direction of the control room.

Onslaught checked the cameras on Level Four, but Vortex was nowhere to be seen. As a precaution, he checked the whereabouts of Aggravator and Heliopause. The former was in the barracks mess hall, collecting his ration, and the latter...

Onslaught engaged the volume. 

"...only be disappointed," Heliopause said. 

Starstreaker shook his head. He walked past his fellow flier, and flopped down in the command chair. "Hope prevails," he said. 

"You're a fool."

"A companionable fool?" Starstreaker spun the chair. "He'll be all right, you'll see."

Heliopause kicked the remains of the decontamination pack back into the supply closet. 

"I mean it," Starstreaker said. "Treads is better than he thinks he is. Talon's in stasis now. They're going to ship him out to the nearest med-lab as soon as the supply shuttle comes."

"You shouldn't be so invested," Heliopause said. "He's not your trine."

Starstreaker spun the chair back to face the console. His expression was lost to the camera. "Hypocrite," he said.

" _I_ am not a seeker." Heliopause spoke with such smug superiority that Onslaught wanted to reach into the monitor and throttle him. "I was built on HEX, I'm not one point of a triangle incomplete without the other two, I am whole."

"Yeah, like you don't want a bond," Starstreaker said. "Talon's going to be fine. He'll come back, and we'll find a third."

"That's not bonding," Heliopause said. "It's salvage."

Starstreaker slumped in the chair. "Something crawled right up your tailpipe, didn't it?" he said. "Just frag off."

Onslaught's hand hovered over his comm panel, but Heliopause simply sniffed and walked away. 

Thank Sigma. 

A flash of pink on another monitor signalled Vortex's emergence from the interrogation cell. He leaned against the wall and activated his comm. Onslaught switched the audio feed, then cut it again when it became clear that the comm was for him. 

"Commander," Vortex said, all business now, as though he hadn't just pitched a fit about the siren. "I think you should come down to Level Four."


	4. Chapter 4

To Onslaught's surprise, the pink coating Vortex's arms hadn't come from any of the prisoners. It was a scare tactic, siphoned from his own tanks. It made the interrogator slightly slippery.

Onslaught wiped his hand on his thigh. "So tell me," he said. "Why am I here?"

"Why exactly," Vortex said. "I had a look at your record. You should have your own Star Cruiser, you should be conquering worlds. But you're not."

Onslaught waited; this better be going somewhere.

"You wanted to inspect the prisoners," Vortex said. "You put it on your list. Don't give me that look, of course I hacked your files. You want to inspect the prisoners, and there's no time like the present, is there?"

It was fortunate for Vortex that he chose that moment to move off down the corridor. The extra distance between Onslaught's fists and the interrogator's face helped cool his circuits. 

Vortex opened a blast door, and deactivated a set of energon bars to let them through. The air was stale inside, hardly moving. Warm, too, and prickling with radiation. It was better when they reached the cell block, although not by much.

"Who do you have?" Onslaught said. 

"There are three left," Vortex replied. "Wiperblade, Block, and Heatshield. Security picked them up in Kalis, I've got paperwork listing, heh, 'proven links' to the Groundframe Separatist League in reference to the bombing in Altihex."

"You suspect these links were fabricated?"

"I know they were." Vortex sidestepped a nasty looking yellow pool. The edges steamed. 

Onslaught's engine stalled. "Your prisoners are here because of convictions you know to be false?"

Vortex turned, and gave him a curious look. "Yes," he said. "And no." He pulled a cloth from a compartment and wiped down his arms. "Are you clean?"

"What?"

"Bug-free, all recording devices off, not broadcasting anything? 'Cause I'm about to share information that'll see you dead if it goes any further than these cells."

The briefest of pauses, then Onslaught nodded. 

"All right," Vortex said. "The prisoners were sent by Valence; he's the aide to Senator Cynosure. The League isn't a terrorist group, it's a smokescreen. They've been working the past vorn to bring Cynosure down. They have all kinds of intel on him."

"What about the bombing?" 

"Valence arranged it," Vortex said. "They were framed."

"And still you process them?" Onslaught felt as though the contents of that acrid puddle had crawled into the back of his mouth.

Vortex shrugged. "Orders are orders."

"There is such a thing as due process," Onslaught said. "There are channels specifically designed for reporting corruption. This is barbarous."

"This," Vortex said, "is politics." He stopped by a scratched and pitted door: cell number two. "They're here because Cynosure needs to know how deep their group goes, who's involved, how much of that damaging intel is still out there. He's got his data cables in all kinds of things; if it got out it'd be him in here not them."

Onslaught's vocaliser crackled. "Who else knows?" he said. 

"No-one," Vortex replied. "I've got two channels outta here, one goes to Intel back in Iacon, the other goes straight to Valence. If there's a weak link, it's at Cynosure's end." 

"Why are you telling me?" Onslaught said. 

Vortex shrugged and opened the cell door. "You'll see," he said. "Wipey, stand the frag up so the commander can give you an inspection."

Wiperblade struggled to his feet; the light gave his green paintwork a sickly patina, and his hands shook. Onslaught logged the mech's physical state, his energy levels, the cleanliness of his cell. He tried to reason through Vortex's motivations, to see what the interrogator was trying to show him. He came up blank. 

"Wipey," Vortex said. "Tell the commander what you told me yesterday."

Wiperblade looked from Vortex to Onslaught, his blue optics wide. He backed up against the far wall, his bodywork rattling. "I... I don't know, I..."

"Yes, you said that a lot." Vortex spoke softly. "You also told me about your friend, do you remember? The one who helped you set up the League. What was his name?"

The false kindness was grotesque, but Onslaught resisted the urge to violence. 

"I... uh..." Wiperblade shook his head. The curved panels of his chassis shifted, as he tried to flatten himself against the wall. He drew a deep vent. "His name was Procyon."

Onslaught had never been so glad of his mask. "This inspection is complete," he said. "Out!"

* * *

"Now do you see?" Vortex sat on a desk in the interrogation cell, swinging his feet. 

"I see why there's no surveillance in this room," Onslaught said. He stood by the door, arms crossed over his chest. 

"Procyon was your mentor," Vortex said. "I told you, I read your record. It's not like you made any effort to hide it."

"I don't see how this is relevant." Onslaught folded his arms. "I haven't had contact with Procyon in six vorns."

"But you're his," Vortex said. "To Cynosure, to Valence, to the generals and the directors and everyone else tangled up in their wires. This is what put the brakes on your career. This is why you never got that battleship, and you never will."

Cold wormed its way through Onslaught's conduits. "They sent me here to die," he said.

"They sent you here to stagnate," Vortex said. "I guess they hoped you'd torque me off, and I'd return you to them in a box." He flared his rotors and stopped swinging his legs. "They're tying up loose ends. But you're not a loose end. Yet. You're more... collateral."

"Collateral." It was not a pleasant word.

"Procyon poisoned your career," Vortex said. "If he'd beat Cynosure, you'd never even have known this place existed. You'd have your Star Cruiser, you'd have your own invasion force. But he didn't. He died. In the Altihex bombing." His optics flickered. "You didn't know? Well now you do. He was meant to be meeting a contact to pass on the intel that would destroy Cynosure. Three vorns of work, wasted. Guess he just made the wrong contacts."

"Why are you telling me this?" Onslaught said, but as soon as the words were out he realised just how ignorant he had been. He held a hand up for silence. "You're a loose end," he said. 

Vortex shrugged. "I will be, eventually."

"You could have reported them." 

"And what?" Vortex laughed. "They'd go public, would they? Launch an inquiry? They'd pat me on the back and give me a cushy little post in Iacon? For frag sake."

"You're afraid of them."

"I want to live," Vortex said. He slid off the desk, and stepped up to Onslaught. "I want out of here. I want citizenship, I want the future they promise you when you step off the assembly line into your ten vorn minimum of military service. I've done my time, I won't end it as some senator's tool."

Onslaught looked down into the upturned visor. "You were testing me," he said. "With Wingtilt."

"I had to know," Vortex said. "Cynosure's sent his own mechs here before, checking on me." He leaned closer. "Will _you_ report them? Do the so-called right thing? Follow protocol? Or will you get us both out of here?" 

Onslaught held his ground, but Vortex was too close, the proximity distracting. "I need to think."

"Don't take too long."

* * * 

The elevator doors opened at ground level to reveal Treads, plastic-wrapped and vents wheezing. Where Hinge was the harbinger of bad news, Treads was beginning to represent the death of Onslaught's quiet time. 

"Hinge has it," he said, before Onslaught had a chance to step around him. 

"You're meant to be in quarantine," Onslaught commented. 

"I tried to hail you," Treads replied, his voice muffled and little rivulets of condensation running down the inside of his suit. "Your comm was out of range. I couldn't send anyone else. Figured you'd be down there."

Onslaught edged around the tank, avoiding contact with the plastic. "How bad is it?"

"Pretty bad," Treads replied. "It's not deep, but it's all over his chest and his back. It's hard to tell on him what's cosmic rust and what's regular rust."

"Is he isolated?"

Treads nodded. "He's not leaving med-bay," he said. "He's... watching Talon."

"You put Talon in stasis," Onslaught said. "He shouldn't _need_ watching." 

"About that..." Treads took a sudden interest in his own feet. "Uh..."

Onslaught's patience, already sorely tested by Vortex, was beginning to wear thin. "Out with it!"

The overlapping plates of Treads' shoulder guards rattled, and he shifted his weight from foot to foot. When he spoke, his voice was infuriatingly quiet. "I... He's getting worse. There was, uh, a mix-up with the parts I took out, I mean, the parts I had to take out. They were infected, I couldn't leave them in!"

"Speak sense," Onslaught growled. "What exactly did you do?"

Behind them, the door closed, the elevator heading back down. Treads gave it a wary look. 

"Treads!"

"I... uh..." The tank clattered to his full height, but still wouldn't raise his head. "I don't know. Something to do with his energy converter. I... I'm sorry."

Onslaught transformed and took off before the elevator could reach Level Four and collect its cargo. He didn't want to encounter Vortex again until he'd had time to think. 

"With me," he called to Treads. "Now."

* * *

Talon was dying. It was as clear to Onslaught in the spotless glare of the isolation room as it would have been on any battlefield. A grey tinge spread from the centre of each armour plate, while the prickling heat of a laser core failure radiated from him, and his vents rattled and whined, unable to keep him cool. All these were familiar. Not quite as familiar, but just as ominous, was the seep of red from his seams. Death was coming, it was only a matter of time. 

Treads shook by the door, his optics focused on nothing, his shoulders hunched. 

"If we get him in an escape pod," he began, but Onslaught's engine roared, and he stopped. 

For a long moment, the only sounds were Talon's unhealthy ventilation, and a constant squeaking and crackle of plastic from Hinge. 

"I think it's a bit late for that," Hinge said. His hazard suit was a tent, covering the open med-kit between his feet, and giving him room to move. Patches of silver gleamed on his chassis, irregular as the lumps of steel wool in his hands. He stank of cleanser.

"Treads," Onslaught said. "I want a form two-two-nine-gamma completed and sent to my console in one breem. Get to it!"

"You know the seeker ain't gonna make it," Hinge said as Treads rushed out. He rolled the wool between his fingers and wedged it in his shoulder. 

Onslaught nodded. 

"But you're gonna order emergency med support." Hinge began to wiggle the wool, a sneer twisting his rust-bitten face. 

Onslaught nodded again. 

Hinge yanked the steel out, and applied it with force to the top of the seam. With his free hand, he tried to scratch his back. "You think this situation's gonna get worse."

Onslaught declined to answer. "I want you to shadow Treads, report to me every quarter joor. Make sure he doesn't do anything irrational. Is that understood?"

Hinge dunked the steel wool in the cleanser. "Yeah, Sir."

* * *

Onslaught fought his way free of the protective suit under the harsh stink of the chemical shower, and dumped it in the hazardous waste chute. 

Dripping, he strode back to his office. 

It was strange how the vorns made it hard to remember the exact planes of Procyon's face, or the specific arrangement of finials on his shoulder pylons. His death opened no pit of grief, it prompted no seething need for vengeance. All it gave Onslaught was a vague sadness that a soldier of that calibre should have fallen to the vapid cruelty of politics and not in glorious service to Cybertron. 

He unlocked his office door, his struts and cables already preparing for him to sink into his chair. 

There was a rotary on his desk. 

The door rolled shut behind him. "How did you get in?" 

Vortex shrugged. "You left the window open." When Onslaught glanced at the closed and secure window, he laughed. "Same way you did, through the door."

"You hacked the lock. Get out, _now_." 

Vortex reached behind himself, producing two small cubes. He eased the lid from one, inhaling the fumes. 

Onslaught wished he couldn't smell them. " _Out!_ "

"I'm here to help you think," Vortex said. He nudged the sealed cube towards Onslaught. 

"I do not require _help_."

Vortex knocked back his drink, swallowing fast with every sign of enjoyment. "All right," he said, licking a stray drop from the welding scar on his lip. "So I lied. I'm not here to help. I'm here to get you overcharged and take advantage." 

Onslaught snatched the cube and put it safely down on the other side of the console. Scrap, that smelt good. 

"Or _you_ can take advantage," Vortex said. He slid off the desk and insinuated himself between Onslaught and his console. "Unless you want a good fight first. I could do that."

Ejecting Vortex was not easy. The fresh fumes smell of him, the tingle of their energy fields, the knowledge that one swung fist would lead to a world of enjoyment: to say it was tempting would be like saying Heliopause was a little bit odd, or cosmic rust was slightly irritating. 

But eventually, Onslaught managed to manoeuvre him - scratched and very slightly dented - into the corridor. 

"Disappointing," Vortex commented. He leaned on the door jamb, his energy field blazing. 

Onslaught tried to stay out of range while not actually moving back. "Take it as a learning experience." 

Vortex opened his mouth, undoubtedly to say something impertinent. Then he closed it again. He glanced down the hall an astrosecond before Onslaught's audials picked up the distant clatter of footsteps. His comm buzzed, an icon of Starstreaker's face appearing on the display. 

With a stern look at Vortex, he connected the call. 

"We've got incoming!" Starstreaker yelled. "Organics, same kind as before only more of them. Helio's got visual, he's still out at camera fourteen, control room is no longer staffed. I repeat, the control room is not currently staffed."

"Received," Onslaught said. "Vortex, get to the control room, you're on monitor duty. Starstreaker, clear them out."

"Uh, I've got guns," Vortex said. "Why can't I go shoot up some aliens?"

"Because you broke into my office," Onslaught said. "Now _move!_ "

* * *

It wasn't hard to find the dead organic. Starstreaker's new-found enthusiasm aside, he wasn't the most conscientious of people. Or the most prone to following orders; pre-empting them, yes, and Onslaught would have to deal with that later too, but not following them. The alien had not been interred in a freezer as per instructions, but lay on a table in the barracks mess hall. 

Aggravator sat at the next table over, staring at it. 

"Commander," he rumbled, as Onslaught rolled in. He went to stand.

"At ease," Onslaught said. He transformed to root mode and gave the bag a gentle shake, the better to see its contents. 

Form was difficult to determine on the monitors. The creatures were fast, their four wings moving in a complex dance, and their long tails curving and whipping. It wasn't easy to see in the bag either; a greenish ooze seeped from the hole in the creature's belly, coating its entire lower half. Clearer were the three sets of compound eyes, still glistening and iridescent, and the sharp, curved beak. The beak echoed the short, sharp claws on each of its six-fingered forelimbs. 

"Zyaal," Aggravator said. 

Onslaught looked up. 

"It's their name. Zyaal." He ducked his head. "Sir. Read it in a datafile."

"Have they attacked before?" Onslaught said. He tipped the bag, draining the goo away from the creature's colourful crest. A rounded bony protrusion, it stuck out in what Onslaught assumed was an aerodynamic way from the back of the creature's head. The colours shifted. Perhaps the Xenological Institute would be interested after all. 

Aggravator stared at the ceiling a while. Onslaught let him; data retrieval could be a ponderous process for Aggravator's frame class. 

"Outside," he said. "Sometimes. Not often since the Kree went away."

"The Kree?"

Aggravator stared at the bag. "With the spaceships. They all went away. After the bombs."

The native sapient species, then. That information had not been in his briefing. 

"Sir?" Aggravator added. He stood, knocking his chair then awkwardly steadying it.

Onslaught nodded. His briefing notes gave a time-frame of almost two vorns since the last sighting of a tool-using native. In their absence the Zyaal may well have become the dominant native species. 

"Permission to go for a drive, Sir?" 

"Denied," Onslaught said. "We have a situation, I may call on you for backup."

If Aggravator was frustrated he didn't show it. He simply re-positioned his chair, sat down, and resumed staring at the bagged Zyaal. 

* * *

By the time Onslaught returned to his office, Treads had submitted form two-two-nine-gamma, and it was short work to double-check, sign, and send it on its merry way to Cybertron. 

The response came half a breem later. Med support dispatched. ETA four days. 

Onslaught sighed; he'd expected two days, even including for space-bridge downtime and the general apathy of his superiors, but four? He signed his glyph again, this time to acknowledge receipt. Talon was as good as dead. The only one of them with any medical training aside from Treads was Vortex, and Onslaught wasn't about to expose any more of his unit to the contagion. Besides, Vortex had no experience with disease, and taking someone apart without killing them was a world away from putting them back together. 

Onslaught sat back, and switched his optics off. It was either that or allow the natural forces of attraction to draw his gaze to the glowing pink cube casting its happy light on the side of his console.

He took stock of his unit. Aggravator was in transit between the mess hall and his room, Vortex was on monitor duty, Treads and Hinge were in Med-bay One with the unconscious Crash and stasis-locked Talon, Starstreaker was shooting aliens, and Heliopause was either fixing camera fourteen or shooting aliens with Starstreaker. 

The three remaining prisoners were safe and well in their cells, and would remain so if Onslaught had anything to do with it. Their retention was unlawful, it made a mockery of Cybertron, of its values, its empire, its army. It made a mockery of him.

When his console buzzed, he activated the comm on reflex.

"Hinge to Onslaught. Commander? Are you there?" 

Onslaught brought his optics back online to find Hinge waving at him through the med-bay security camera. 

"I thought I told you to make a text report," Onslaught said. In the control room, Vortex was also watching Hinge, and with considerable interest. 

Hinge stopped waving. "Sir, I've lost Treads."

* * *

 

" _How_ did you lose him?" Onslaught held the back of Vortex's chair, preventing him from spinning. It was better to involve the interrogator in this than keep him in the dark and store up trouble for later.

On screen, Hinge shrugged, the tent of his hazard suit billowing. "I needed a mirror. Y'know, for my back, I gotta get every last bit. I went into beta stores, it's only on the other side of Crash's room. I was in there for like twenty astroseconds. When I came back, he was gone."

Not for the first time in as many orns, Onslaught felt like putting his fist through the screen. "You should have insisted he go with you."

"I didn't think he'd wander off! He was cleaning scrap, he said he'd stay put."

"I can't reach him," Vortex said. "Comm's dead. He's probably just gone down to the stacks to catch some recharge."

Hinge shook his head. "He was plugged into the forced recharge jack all morning."

"Defrag then," Vortex said. "Whatever."

"Starstreaker to control. Come in, control."

Vortex hit the button before Onslaught could. "Control receiving, what's up?"

"I need backup," Starstreaker said. "There's so many, I... I can't hit them all. And they're _fast_. I gotta keep high or they surround me, but I can't get the ones inside the perimeter _and_ the ones at the breach."

Onslaught brought the perimeter cameras up on the display. Cameras thirteen and fifteen showed the edges of a rippling dark cloud flecked with the occasional flash of red and green. Fourteen was still a blank black square.

"Get Heliopause to help," Onslaught said. 

Vortex audibly powered up his guns. He tapped his fingers on the edge of the console. 

"I can't," Starstreaker said. "Heliopause went back inside for parts when I got here. I commed him, but he isn't answering."

Onslaught slapped the back of Vortex's chair. "Go," he said. "Starstreaker, backup is inbound."

Vortex was out of the seat and sprinting down the corridor before Onslaught had finished speaking. He adjusted the control chair, and sank into it. 

"Received, Sir," Starstreaker said. "There are thousands of these things, I don't know where they're all coming from."

"Commander," Hinge called, waving again at the camera. "Commander, I got a problem. Crash is waking up."

"Sedate him," Onslaught said. 

"I don't know how! Where's the sedative? There's gotta be a thousand chips in the box, and they all got a code on, and I can't find the list! I don't know if there even _is_ a list!"

"Hold," Onslaught said. He added the interrogator's channel to his open comms. "Vortex, what's the ID code for a regular sedative chip?"

"I swear on the life energon of Cybertron itself, if you make me go into that med-bay, I will _end you_." 

On screen, Hinge threw up his arms. 

"Just answer the question," Onslaught said. "Hinge needs to sedate Crash, what number is the appropriate chip?"

"Anything in the four-twenty series," Vortex replied. "Nothing above a four-twenty-eight though, unless it's by Cybernex, he won't wake up."

"Did you get that, Hinge?"

"Uh-huh. Yes, Sir." Hinge vanished from the display, but Onslaught could hear the squeaking of his jaw and the clang and rattle as he (hopefully) opened the appropriate storage box. 

The transformation noise appeared to come from Vortex's line. The fierce thrum of rotor blades confirmed it. "I've got visual," Vortex said. "Permission to fire at will?"

"Granted," Onslaught replied. "Hinge, progress report."

Vortex's gleeful whooping drowned out everything else, and Onslaught turned him down. 

"Hinge?"

"I'm still looking! I can see four-thirties, four-tens, three-twenties. Ha, yes! Four-twenty series. OK... OK four twenty-two. Yeah." A pause, then, "Crash, buddy. I got something for you."

Vortex moved into range of camera fifteen, guns blazing and grey paint already splattered with green. 

"Crash," Hinge continued. "Hey, buddy, there ain't no need to move. Can you hear me? Can you... No, good. OK, Commander, I'm opening his, uh, panel on his arm? I hope it's the right one. Inserting now. It's in! It made a click. Does it self activate?"

"Commander!" Starstreaker cut in. "They've found point of entry. Main building, Polyhex concourse. There's some at the barracks too. We could really do with Heliopause."

Heliopause, frag. Onslaught tried the flier's comm again. Nothing. And Treads was missing; this did not bode well. "Vortex, should the sedative self-activate?" He opened yet another channel. "Aggravator, report to Starstreaker at access point five, perimeter defence."

"Yeah, it's all automatic," Vortex said. "Long as he put it in right. Woohoo! Gotcha, you flying meat-sack!" 

"Crash, can you hear me? Crash? OK," Hinge said. "His vitals are slowing. Frag oh frag oh please don't dip, Sigma Sigmasigma... OK, they're stable. He's stable. Crash is back under. What's that sound?"

Hinge crossed the camera's view to the med-bay door. Vortex appeared again in the view of camera fifteen; he was almost completely green.

"Aggravator," Onslaught repeated. "Come in."

"Commander, Sir?" Aggravator sounded drowsy. "I was asleep. I think someone's on the roof."

"Report to Starstreaker at turret fourteen," Onslaught said. "We have a situation outside. Secure the perimeter, we'll deal with anything that got in later."

"Zyaal?" Aggravator asked. 

"Confirmed," Onslaught said. "Now get out there and deal with it!"

"The frag's a zyaal?" Vortex said. "Ha! You hit 'em dead on the crest, their heads explode!"

"This is not target practice!" Onslaught snapped. "Hinge, we have multiple native organics in Polyhex concourse. I want you to put Med-bay One in full lockdown."

"Uh, O _kay_." Hinge said. He gave the door a nervous glance, and this time the comm picked up a dull bang and the unmistakable sound of claws on metal. "I think I can do that, Sir. But, uh... I got another problem in here. Talon's temp keeps going up, and he's making this noise like hmmmmmmmmm. What if his core goes critical?"

That's all they needed. "The iso-ward should have a blast shield," Onslaught said. "Ensure it's in place." He tried Treads again with no hope of an answer, then Heliopause. He was not disappointed. 

He activated the PA system. "This is control. We have a code yellow alert. Treads, report to Med-bay One. Heliopause, report to Starstreaker at camera fourteen. Respond to confirm."

He should have sent Aggravator after them. But no, cameras thirteen and fifteen showed the edges of a growing cloud of zyaal. Securing the perimeter was still priority one. 

"Blast shield activated," Hinge said. His jaw squeaked. "Permission, uh, to get back to self-decontamination? Sir?"

"Granted," Onslaught said. "Remove your armour if you have to. Med support is on its way." In four days, but Hinge didn't need to know that yet.

"It is?" Hinge sagged. "Thank frag." 

When this was over, Onslaught thought, they would have drills. Day in, day out, until the whole over-familiar, insubordinate lot of them learnt how to address him, what to say in front of him, and how not - in Starstreaker's case - to pre-empt his orders and desert the control room. 

Tidy, controlled drills. It wasn't the answer to their problems, but it would be a start. 

It wouldn't do any good though, would it? Cynosure would still be pulling the strings. No matter what a shining example of military perfection he created from this bunch of misfits, Onslaught was still Procyon's mech. 

On the security monitors, Aggravator rolled into view of camera thirteen. He stabilised his cab, his twin guns angling, and shot a volley of laser fire up into the sickly yellow sky. 

At least someone knew how to follow orders. 

"For frag sake, _aim!_ " Vortex yelled. "What was that, a warning shot?"

Competence, however, appeared to be optional. 

Regardless, the situation was nominally under control. Onslaught stood and prepped his gun. 

"This is command," he said, broadcasting across all frequencies save one. "Control room is empty. I'm going to look for Treads."


	5. Chapter 5

A zyaal bobbed forward on its spindly legs. Its crest flashed green and red, and its many eyes blinked in sequence. It was larger than the one in the xeno-hazard bag, its wingspan filling the corridor. It hissed, crouching to pounce, and Onslaught fired. 

Green sprayed the walls; the zyaal fell. That made five. Onslaught kicked the steaming corpse aside and continued his advance. 

So much for securing the perimeter first. 

"Onslaught to Starstreaker, report."

"They're still coming!" Starstreaker cried. "There's thousands of them, tens of thousands. Point of origin's somewhere at the far end of the old city."

"How many are in the base?" Onslaught said, a portion of his mind sectioning off to consider the possibilities of bombardment from one of the planetary defence satellites. 

"I don't know," Starstreaker said. "I can't keep tabs on them. More than a hundred? Oh frag, Aggravator! Aggravator, where are you going?"

"Aggravator!" Onslaught snapped. A zyaal's beak appeared around the next corner, then vanished again. "Aggravator, respond!"

Aggravator's voice came slow and calm. "There's something I need to do."

Onslaught rounded the corner and fired into the onrushing pack of zyaal. Insubordinate glitch. "Aggravator, get back to your post. That is an order!" 

Aggravator did not respond. 

"He's worse than useless," Vortex said. "Frag, this is fun! Starstreaker, forty-three degrees, the big one's mine!"

"This is not a competition!" Onslaught roared. The zyaal crunched and squelched under his feet, a grotesque carpet.

"I don't get it," Starstreaker said, over the roar of his guns. "Aggravator's got great aim, it's his saving grace."

"He's faulty," Vortex said. "Watch your tailpipe!"

Onslaught advanced. Somewhere ahead of him a group of zyaal chittered. It wasn't a comforting sound. There were too many modulations of clicks and chirps, too wide a range of pitches. It sounded complex.

A burst of laser fire echoed through the halls. 

Onslaught pressed tight to the wall, weapon ready. It was too close to be Aggravator; that left Treads and Heliopause. Onslaught couldn't bank on cooperation from either of them.

"Commander?" Hinge spoke softly. "Commander, Talon's getting worse."

Onslaught switched to text. 'Sit tight,' he sent. 

His only reply was the solemn squeaking of Hinge's jaw. 

'Command to Treads.' Onslaught arranged the glyphs on his viewscreen before transmitting them on the medic's frequency. 'Treads, do you read?'

The soft squeaking of Hinge's jaw slowed. Treads did not reply. 

Onslaught crossed the hall and took position at the next corner. One quick sweep of the corridor beyond, and he was through and into the Polyhex concourse. 

Zyaal were everywhere. The dead, the dying, the fighting furious clawing their way through the roof. Onslaught brought up the building's schematics, a shining bright overlay to his visual feed. 

An alien chirped, another clicked. Two fell from the ceiling, wings swept up and knees bent to absorb the impact. They advanced in formation, an inverted V headed straight for either side of him. 

Onslaught knelt, aimed, and fired over their heads into the supporting beam of the other end of the concourse. The zyaal ducked and hissed, the beam cracked, and the ceiling plummeted into the hall. 

Onslaught fired into the oncoming hoard, then sprang back. They came at him, a fury of wings and talons, their crests flashing a prismatic rainbow of colours. He knelt and fired at a hard angle into the ceiling. Another beam cracked, drooped. He kept firing, but his gun needed time to recharge. He grabbed a grenade, popped the pin, and rolled it gently into place. Then he ran. 

The blast was more powerful than he wanted, but it did the job. Damage reports pinged him from the building's automatic controls, and he logged them all. 

"This is Onslaught," he said, broadcasting to those of his troops he could still count on. "Polyhex concourse is secure."

A noise behind him made him spin. He crouched, aimed, fired at the shadow flitting past the doors at the other end of the hall. He missed.

Something rolled down the corridor, bouncing over the bodies of the dead zyaal. Onslaught rolled too, tucking himself tight to the wall, bracing for a shock-wave that never came. 

It wasn't a bomb. 

Onslaught uncurled, shouldering his gun. Resisting the urge to chase, he hit his comms. "This is Onslaught. If you encounter Heliopause, shoot on sight. I repeat, shoot on sight."

"Is that shoot to kill?" Vortex called; he sounded cheerful.

"To incapacitate," Onslaught replied. He stepped through the gore, and picked up the severed head of their only medic. "Treads is down. Hinge, respond."

A squeak, then, "Did... Did you just say Treads is down?" 

"Affirmative," Onslaught replied. He ran a quick scan: processor activity zero, significant chance of data corruption. Oil dripped onto his hands; he turned the head over and fastened it to his hip. "Hinge, access the medical terminal, you're looking for the procedure for emergency storage of a disconnected personality component."

"Sir," Hinge croaked. "Wha... What's the access code?"

Onslaught transmitted his own. "Use this. I want you ready when I arrive."

Heliopause was playing. No doubt the chaos of Onslaught's other problems was the opportunity he'd been looking for. 

He could wait. Treads was more important. 

Heading in the direction of Med-bay One, Onslaught hit his comm again. "Onslaught to Aggravator." He didn't wait for a reply. "You have one chance, and one chance only, to resume your post at turret fourteen. If you do not comply, I will take appropriate action."

"I will!" Aggravator cried. The line was crackly, his voice was worse. "I will go back, I just." He paused, and Onslaught could hear the chirring clicks of zyaal in the background. "I have to do this first. I'll go straight back after. I'll go straight to the cells if you want. I don't care. I don't want us to die."

"Explain," Onslaught snapped, but Aggravator cut the comm. 

Cupping Treads' head to minimise the impact of his movement, Onslaught ran to Med-bay One. Three clean, simple shots, and the zyaal chewing through the door were nothing but a nasty smear on the scrubbed steel. 

A crash inside, then Hinge's voice over the comm. "Commander?"

"Hinge," Onslaught said. "I'm outside the door. I'm not suited. I'm going to leave Treads in the hallway. What I've got of him. When I give the signal, end lockdown, come get him, then put the med-bay back in lockdown. Understood?"

"Yeah," Hinge said. His voice was as crackly as Aggravator's. "Yeah, I got it. Sir, I don't know frag all about personality components or emergency preservation or any of that scrap."

"Do your best," Onslaught said. He lay the head gently on a patch of clean floor, and made his way cautiously back the way he had come. When he was far enough from the door, he sent Hinge the signal. 

He didn't stop to watch, but found a doorway to pause in, and checked his weapons. "Starstreaker, how's it looking out there?"

Vortex laughed. "Like Monacus at happy hour." 

"We're on top of it," Starstreaker said firmly. 

"Liar," Vortex said. "There's maybe a thousand in the compound, more on their way. I'm down to thirty-five percent power, Starstreaker's looking tired. We're gonna need backup soon, and not Aggravator."

"We can deal with it," Starstreaker snarled. 

"Then deal with it," Onslaught snapped. 

"Oh look," Vortex said. "The aimless wonder returns!"

"Aggravator?" Onslaught held back on his sigh of relief.

"Aggravator," Starstreaker said, "take position. Fire at will.” A brief pause, then, "Aggravator, that was an order. Aggravator!"

"The frag is he carrying?" A change in the pitch of his rotor blades may have been Vortex wheeling round. "Hey, Aggravator, what the frag is that?"

Aggravator's reply didn't come by comm, but Vortex must have been close because Onslaught could just about make out his words. 

"Stay back," he said. "This is my fault." 

"Vortex, get back in position!"

"Starstreaker," Onslaught said. "What's happening?"

Starstreaker took a moment to reply, his weapons loud over the comm. "Vortex has left his position, he's still shooting, but only to keep them away from himself. Aggravator... isn't shooting. He's in root mode, he's carrying a box. I can see... Vector Sigma, is that a juvenile organic?"

" _Five_ juvenile organics," Vortex commented. 

"They were all on their own," Aggravator said. "I thought they were going to die."

Onslaught focused on his ventilation. He wished Heliopause would charge round the corner, guns blazing and fists ready. 

That, he could deal with.

"I didn't want them to die," Aggravator added. 

"So you brought them into the base?" The horror in Starstreaker's voice was almost as clear as the strain. 

"I don't want anyone to die," Aggravator said. "I need to give them back."

"Yes," Onslaught said. "You do. _Now._ ” He left the alcove, moving fast, heading for Heliopause's last known location. “Vortex, Starstreaker, provide covering fire. Get Aggravator out of the complex. See if the zyaal follow."

"Commander," Hinge spoke up, his voice small and wary. "Commander, I think Talon's going critical."

"What's that about Talon?" Starstreaker said. "Talon's in stasis. He's going to be OK."

"Quiet," Onslaught said. "Starstreaker, perform your function, report to me when Aggravator is clear of the base."

Something on Hinge's end whined. "Uh, Commander? The blast shield's the clear one, right? The one with a yellow symbol top left?"

"That ain't it," Vortex said. "You got the anti-contamination shield."

Onslaught growled. "Vortex, _be quiet_. Hinge, it's a thick metal screen. It rolls down from the top. There's an energon barrier, it will engage as soon as you've locked the screen in place. Now _do it_."

"I..." Hinge squeaked, and Onslaught couldn't tell if it was his jaw or some tiny panicked reaction from his vocaliser. "I think it's too late for that."

The explosion rocked through the building. The wall ballooned out, throwing Onslaught clear into the door opposite. Metal crumpled, stretched, ripped. The shock-wave tumbled him across the floor, his gun caught under him, a sharp pain ripping through his waist. 

" _Talon!_ " Starstreaker wailed. Vortex yelled, "Incoming!" Aggravator roared. 

Hinge didn't have time to scream. 

Onslaught groaned. Zyaal chittered over his comm, Starstreaker howled. Onslaught pitched himself over, hand on his waist. It came away pink. 

His gun was bent, the barrel a painful intrusion. He grabbed the stock with both hands and heaved. It came out with a sickening crunch. Damage reports nearly blinded him. 

"Starstreaker!" Vortex screamed. "You lube-sucking cog-headed glitch, _come back!_ "

Onslaught's vision blurred. He shook his head, tapped the side of his visor. He tried to stand, and slipped in his own fluids. Grimacing, he clutched at his hip. On the third try, he got his portable field repair kit open. On the fifth try, he got the mesh unrolled, and stapled it firmly to the rend in his fuel tank. 

Energy at fifteen percent, not good. Hydraulic pressure was dropping too, but slowly. Increments, he could cope with. He'd fought his way clear of worse. 

He used his gun to lever himself up. It was useless now. He checked the building's schematics, searching for the closest small arms locker. Corridor outside Med-bay One. That was no use, there wouldn't _be_ a corridor outside Med-bay One any more. No Talon, no Crash, no Hinge, no trace of Treads. 

"Vortex," he called. "Aggravator. Give the zyaal their young, and fall back to the control room. Do you copy?"

"Loud and clear," Vortex said. 

Onslaught transferred all comms to text only, and crept into the corridor. The more he moved, the easier it got. To an extent. He became aware of a dozen smaller wounds, shrapnel, dents from his impact with the door. Some of the pieces were still hot. The wall was gone, only a stub remained. Smoke clouded the air, a thin haze between Onslaught and the sad crater that was all that remained of Med-bay One.

He moved off. His armour plinked as it cooled, and he wondered how he'd failed to realise he had been so hot.

Only the whine of a jet engine and the sudden crash of a less-than-perfect landing made him look back. 

"No, nonononono, Talon, no, not again, not again!" Starstreaker knelt in the centre of the crater. His wings were a mess, his fuselage scratched and punctured. He clawed at the ground, his hands steaming where they met the superheated surface. " _Not again!_ "

"Get out of there!" Onslaught barked, but Starstreaker kept pawing at the ground, trying to scrape together particles of nothing at all. 

Onslaught faced violently forward. He wouldn't watch that. He had to get to control, secure the room, patch himself up. Hunt for Heliopause. 

Behind him, Starstreaker wailed his misery into the ashes. 

* * *

It was a long slow walk to control. Onslaught picked up two pistols at the nearest small arms locker. He holstered one, still leaning on his own defunct weapon for support. 

There was no sign of Heliopause. 

Zyaal littered his way, some dead, some stalking, calling. They dipped their heads and flashed their crests, and hissed at him with some strange alien warning. He blew them away. 

Control was locked when he arrived. Good, but it was no reason to abandon caution. The door slid open, and he made a sweep of the room. 

There was someone sat at the desk. 

No, not sat. Slumped. A limp frame silhouetted against the monitors. Thanks to the backrest, Onslaught couldn't tell whether or not it had a head. 

A clang sounded to his left and he turned, aimed, and realised his mistake as a single footfall echoed from behind and a large blunt object slammed into the back of his helm. 

* * *

"I told you he was trouble." A smooth voice came from the darkness. 

Onslaught's optics booted slowly, his sensor net coming online in a shower of warnings. The dressing had fallen from his fuel tank; when he tried to move, the dregs made a hollow sound. 

Heliopause knelt in front of him. They were in the control room; the door was open, the chair still occupied. The light from the monitors flickered over Treads' headless corpse. 

"I told you he was wrong for you," Heliopause said. "Remember?"

Onslaught struggled to stand, to swing a fist, to wrap his hands around that gleaming bronze throat and squeeze. But his swing was weak, the grey blotches of energy starvation already dotting his armour. Heliopause didn't even flinch.

Instead, he smiled. "That won't do you any good." His wings gleamed, as reflective as his face; he smelt heavily of polish. "I warned you to stay away from him. Vortex isn't for you."

"This is ridiculous." Onslaught pushed up on his hands, and succeeded only in banging his back against the wall. 

"I saw him." Heliopause leaned in. "Walking away from your room, covered in _your_ paint." He reached into the hole in Onslaught's waist and drew out a section of hose. He wrapped it around his fingers, batting Onslaught's hand away as though it was nothing. He heaved. 

Onslaught held fast, denta clenched. 

"I warned Treads too," Heliopause said. "Vortex is mine, not his. Not yours. He belongs with me."

"And Relay?" Onslaught dismissed the warnings, ignored the flood of hydraulic fluid draining through his cavities into his legs. 

Heliopause laughed. "Oh, but my love took care of Relay. He's really very good, when he wants to be. He has his fun, and then he kills them."

A haze of snow cut through Onslaught's visual field. He shook his head, leaned left, tried to get the last few drops of energon from his tank to somewhere useful. A shadow moved in his peripheral vision; he refused to acknowledge it. 

"Treads was stupid." Heliopause shook the fluid from his hand. He stood, his lasers whining as they gathered charge. "He knew not to get involved, but he couldn't resist. I won't suffer competition."

Onslaught didn't trust his optics. He stared at the gun, focused on the minute flaws in the muzzle. He couldn't let his gaze wander, couldn't let it follow the movement by the door. 

"I was going to give him Treads' laser core," Heliopause continued. "As a gift. He collects trophies. But I think he'll like yours more." 

Onslaught balled his fists. Heliopause pressed the muzzle to his head. 

In the doorway Vortex took aim, and fired. 

Heliopause reeled, his weapon falling into Onslaught's lap. He spun, snarling. Vortex shot him again, advancing slowly. Then again as Heliopause dived for the gun. 

The flier missed, and Onslaught wrapped slick fingers around the grip. Vortex fired again, kicking out, sweeping the jet's legs from under him. Heliopause fell, and Vortex knelt heavily on his chest. The rotary was filthy, scorched and pitted and dripping with alien slime. 

Heliopause winced, lips twisting in a smile, optics bright. "You win," he said, as though this was a game, as though Vortex would laugh and let him up. 

"I know," Vortex said. He wiped a glob of alien gore from the jet's shining face, and shot him through the optic. 

* * *

Onslaught hissed, but held his peace. Vortex was not gentle. He was, however, freshly showered, and for that Onslaught could only be thankful. He lay on a berth in Med-bay Three, the rotary's hands in his chest, a soldering iron smoking against the outside of his fuel tank. 

"Did you have time to think?" Vortex said.

Onslaught would have laughed, were it not for the soldering iron. "No."

"I saved your life. You owe me."

"A life for a life?" Onslaught asked. 

"In a manner of speaking." Vortex grabbed another bar of solder, and leaned in. "I saved your life, you can give me mine. I deserve it. I'll even kill Cynosure for you, when I'm out."

"Done," Onslaught said. "But I want the prisoners released."

"Yeah, like that's gonna happen."

"Fake their deaths," Onslaught said. "I'll get them off planet."

Vortex shrugged. "Sure, whatever. OK." He withdrew, soldering iron and all. "You're patched, you'll live until the med team gets here."

Onslaught pushed himself upright, his optics momentarily shorting. Even connected to the forced recharge jack, he wasn't exactly steady. "What about Aggravator?"

"Fragged if I know," Vortex said. "He took off with the zy-things. You know they've got circuitry in their heads? Up in their crests. They're cyber-organics, I only found out in the washracks."

Onslaught shook his head. He hadn't known, and he didn't care. "Which way did he go?"

"Same way they came," Vortex said. "I don't think he's coming back."

"All right," Onslaught said. He glanced over at the iso-ward. A solitary glint of yellow was all that was left of Starstreaker's proud paint scheme. Everything else was scorched and bubbled, radiation burns as well as regular heat. He lay panting, sedated. 

Vortex kicked Onslaught gently in the ankle. "You should get out," he said. "Out of med-bay, off this slag-forsaken dirtball, out of the military."

Onslaught shrugged. "Maybe."

"It's all politics at the top," Vortex said. "You weren't programmed for that."

"And you know what I _was_ programmed for, I suppose?" Onslaught said. He peeled the lid from a cube of medical grade energon, and knocked it back in one. 

Vortex brushed past, his energy field alive with possibility. "Sure," he said. "Come with me and I'll show you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's probably worth noting that I think Onslaught had the potential to have been a Big Damn Hero, but his life took him in another direction. 
> 
> Thankyou to everyone who read and gave feedback, here and elsewhere :)


End file.
